Page 12 of Once a Scoundrel

Chapter Three

What the devil was she up to?

Hours later, the ball having ended and the guests scattered, Stephen leaned on his forearms over the balustrade of the first-floor gallery above the front hall and watched through the dim shadows as Faith slinked silently toward the door. Still in her satin gown and slippers, her strawberry blonde hair pinned on top her head, she also wore a man’s greatcoat that was so long it nearly reached her ankles.

A footman who was carrying down the last of the glasses from the billiards room hurried down the hall toward him. Stephen stopped him, then motioned for him to be quiet before gesturing downstairs.

He pulled a coin from his pocket and held it up. Bribery worked just as well among household servants as it did among soldiers. “Any idea where Lady Faith is going?”

The footman’s lips curled as if the coin were the easiest one he’d ever earned. “There’s a horse in the stables gone lame, sir,” he answered quietly. “Lady Faith often sneaks out at night to tend to the animals.”

He smiled wryly. Of course she did. The Duchess of Strathmore had tried to instill in her children a sense of charitable duty in helping the sick and poor by encouraging them to volunteer in London hospitals and assist the village doctors at their estates at Hartsfield and Brambly. But Faith had carried her medical knowledge into the barns and applied all she’d learned to lambs, foals, chicks, puppies, kittens...While her sisters had been bandaging a wounded horse guard, Faith had bandaged his horse.

Having a wife who wanted to be a leech drove Strathmore to distraction; having a daughter who wanted to work in the stables nearly undid the man.

Stephen tossed the coin to the footman, who took it and hurried on his way, then leaned over the railing, to once more gaze down at her. A strong urge to follow her rose inside him. He wanted to talk to her again. There was so much more that needed to be said—

But not tonight. She wasn’t ready yet.

She’d agreed to try to forgive him and be friends again, and he let that be enough for now.Friends. His lips twisted at the irony. Yet it was a first step, and he had to choose carefully how to reveal the rest. But he had time, and India had taught him patience. After all, he’d already waited years; what were a few more days?

With a glance over her shoulder, not seeing him watching from the shadows above, Faith slipped out the door.

Tending a lame horse in a ball gown—that was just like her. Always unpredictable. Still a bit careless. Yet always a soft spot in her heart for poor creatures needing comfort.

He only hoped she possessed enough softness in her heart to comfort the poor creature he’d become.

Shoving away from the railing, he moved through the gallery and down the hall. The house was finally settling down, now with dawn only a few hours away. The guests who had come only for the dance had been spirited away by a long line of black carriages. Those who were remaining for the house party were tucked into bedrooms for the night, although not necessarily in their own rooms nor with their own spouses.

To think that four years ago he would have been among them—Christ. If he’d wanted nothing more than meaningless swiving tonight, he could have easily had it. The hungry looks Viscountess Rathbourne had been sending him all evening practically shouted how amenable the woman was to doing just that. For God’s sake, she’d practically groped him in the garden when he’d stepped out for a moment of fresh air.

But he didn’t want to go back to that life.

Although society expected him to take up right where he left off as a rogue who had filled his time doing nothing more productive than drinking himself into oblivion and gambling away his fortune, he had other plans. Too much had changed for him to ever go back. He’d seen too much violence and destruction, experienced too much brutality and pain. It had taken the death of his best friend to make him realize that life was both astonishingly short and unbelievably precious. That he’d done a damnably fine job so far of wasting it. And that it was time to set everything to rights.

He walked into the smoking room and found Strathmore, Chatham, and his father sitting in front of a fire which had already burned down to the coals, yet none of the three men were ready to turn in for the night. He helped himself to a glass of cognac from the side table, and all three sets of eyes flicked to him as he took a cigar from the humidor and lit it on the oil lamp. But their conversation over Prince Albert’s undue influence on the queen—and the queen’s undue influence on the prime minister—continued uninterrupted.

“She’s having a child per year now,” Edward Westover, Duke of Strathmore, mused as he kicked his feet onto the fireplace fender yet somehow remained impossibly straight-spined in the crushed velvet chair. He was celebrating his fifty-fifth birthday this week, but the man still possessed a solid build maintained through hard work on his land.

Thomas Matteson, Duke of Chatham and Stephen’s uncle, raised a brow. “You’d begrudge her a family?”

“No.” Strathmore flicked the ash from his cigar. “Not as long as she doesn’t begrudge us her role as sovereign.”

“The colonel’s stuck in his ways,” his father informed Stephen as he sank into the empty chair beside the three men. “He still can’t come to terms with the fact that the monarch married a German.”

“God preserve us,” Strathmore muttered and finished off his brandy in a gasping swallow. The two old friends beside him chuckled.

“The empire’s changing, Edward, whether we like it or not,” his father commented with a shake of his head. “Railways crossing the countryside, steam packets crossing the Channel...The old days are gone.”

Chatham pointed his cigar at Stephen. “It’s in the hands of men like Dunwich now.”

Strathmore groaned. “Then Godtrulypreserve us!”

Stephen’s lips curled into a wry smile.

The duke pushed himself out of his chair and crossed the room for more brandy, fetching the entire bottle.

“So, Dunwich.” Strathmore shot him a glance as he refilled his drink, then topped off Chatham’s glass. “You’re back in England.” He set the bottle aside. “Is it for good this time?”